What Time Is It?

Right. So it's Wednesday, just after a lunch the school provided of stirfry veggies and quail eggs with rice and ham-flavoured chicken. Are people that desperate for the taste of ham? And quail eggs . . . delicious. Are there flocks of quail somewhere in the desert? Secret quail farms, far from prying eyes?

But it hasn't all been quail eggs and ham since we got here. There has been work too, complicated by the fact that the new school we were to move into this week is not ready, so everything packed into boxes has to be unpacked so we can use it all again. Then sometime soon we'll get to pack it all up again for the move. But Saudi time, it turns out, isn't quite like what we're used to, especially during Ramadan. Everything slows down to accommodate the fact that no Muslims get to eat or drink during daylight hours, not even water, so they tend to stay up quite late at night making up for it. As a result, we are told, students live a kind of upside down life and can't always be trusted to be present or if present not always to be awake.

The long flights to get here, the seven hour time difference, and the associated jetlag have left the two of us pretty upside down as well, in terms of our sleep and general state of alertness. I discovered, for instance, last night while Rose struggled to get a few hours without waking up, that there is a lot to watch on tv between 2:30 a.m. and 4. I didn't even know there is an National Basketball Channel, and why it is available here in Saudi is an even greater puzzle. BBC World News is excellent, even that early in the morning; the same cannot be said for Fox (at any time of the day or night). The point is, Rose and I are still pretty muddled as to our body clocks and daily rhythms.

While our sleep patterns are messed up, our living quarters are not at all. See that lovely blue pool just steps from our door? Yesterday, just home from work, that pool looked so appealing I couldn't resist. Too hot to go for a run and too tired to try, I decided to go for a swim. It was like climbing into a bowl of soup, in terms of temperature that is, but a treat nonetheless. I won't bore you with details about the very spacious rooms in our villa other than to point out that our bed is the size of our deck in Owen Sound. Rose has to roll over and over and over to get close enough to hear me snore. It's like we've been given an acre, or is that a hectare, to sleep in. An air-conditioned acre, I might add.

Staff at the school have been very friendly and helpful, all the way from Paul Thompson, our Principal, to Johnny our head custodian. Everyone, it seems, wants us here and wants to do whatever it takes to make our stay and our work the best they can be. Paul has made it quite clear that he defers to his teaching staff regarding setting the curriculum, making the decisions about how best to teach the material, and what content is worth teaching. It's a bit of a strange feeling to be so trusted professionally.

Which brings me to the camel crossing signs. We've seen the signs but not the camels, and since the land here is as flat as flat can be, a camel should be pretty easy to spot. Alas, it hasn't happened yet.